


Elsewhere is my name

by Silkblood



Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: Character Study, No Plot/Plotless, Unbeta'd, borderline stream of consciousness, i guess, wordvomit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 01:10:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10583286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silkblood/pseuds/Silkblood
Summary: Isak first researches the multiverse to mend a broken heart.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Alrighty. So this is a short word vomit on Isak and "the multiverse" - please do excuse me if I've messed up something theory-wise, I tried to just keep it vague and use it as a "plot" device. But then again, do not expect an actual plot, I just like introspection very much. Also a shameless near-absence of dialogue. Sorry for typos deriving from my lack of attention or English not being my mother tongue. That said, I loved to write this and, theoretically, I'm not done exploring the concept. And the ship. Both of the things together. Comments and any casual thought will be much appreciated! (The title comes from "Betsy on the roof", a wonderful song by Julia Holter; I do recommend giving it a listen.)

_This can be fixed_ , Isak thinks when he's in front of the wardrobe to pick a hoodie and a pair of jeans, the usual. _I can be fixed._  
He can. He can do whatever he wants with himself, he's the master of his own feelings, pulling at them and throwing them around like puppets. He stops brushing his hair every morning. He stops listening to "gay songs". He also stops smiling and laughing at childish stuff, although he's not sure that too is a product of his conscious transformation. He doesn't think about it. That's all he does, tries to do, after all. He blocks thoughts when they come knocking hard on his mind, he shouts back at them incomprehensible words and cries and he bangs his feet against the doors to make them go away. He yells silently in the midst of crowds and he never looks up at the sky, and he smokes and he drinks because it's a win-win: you get to look cool and you get to stop processing things normally and being sober. You turn into a blur, an unidentified stripe of colour on a blank canvas, vomiting and exaggerating every move, every word, as if it's the last move and the last word you'll ever say.  
The only sky he stares up to is the one on the ceiling of his memories: the ceiling of his room, crowded with stickers of planets and stars and satellites, glowing faintly in the dark of his clearest days, when he was little. They emanated a weak blue light, seemingly coming together every day to kiss him goodnight and lulling him to sleep. His ceiling is that dirty cream blank now, but he remembers the stickers on it like they were still there. He'd memorised the positions, and the distances, and the shapes they created. Now he looks up at night and, just for those brief minutes in which he's drifting into another dimension, he can stop fixing himself, and he can see the blue light again and he sleeps like this body doesn't belong to him. His dreams are a cluster of noisy and messy possibilities blurred into each other and he can't tell the elements apart.  
.  
Once he dreams about telling Jonas. He blurts it out and he doesn't hear his own voice, doesn't know which words he used exactly. All he remembers is Jonas's silence, can't ignore it like the pain of a bullet in his head. The boy has this indecipherable look on his face, and Isak doesn't know what to do, because he knows he made a mistake, that he shouldn't have said it, that he should've kept it a secret, that everything is ruined now. He wakes up panicked, arms and neck sweaty, sticking blankets to his skin. He breathes hard in and out, and he never, ever wants to feel like this again. He knows he can't rely on dreams, they're tricky and the product of his worst fears and he shouldn't listen to them. Later at school. Jonas asks him how he's doing. Isak puts that smile on his face, the one he selects for his best friend only. "I'm always with you, so terribly," he says.  
.  
He'd tore them out one Sunday afternoon, the air that kind of hot that makes you suffocate even though it's snowing outside. The pale stickers went from sticking to the ceiling to lying as tiny slips of beige material on the ground, the planets and their satellites and their stars all made into bits (of memories and old crumpled paper). They reminded Isak of possibilities. He had a glimpse of the universe and that was as far as it could get - a glimpse. Countless celestial bodies and it seemed pretty silly to expect none of them to be more than floating rocks. More so, if the universe was indeed infinite, then maybe there were infinite universes as well. Parallel worlds, where anything that one didn't see happening in one of them happened in another, and in another but in a slightly different way. Disaster and bliss: from the former to the latter, anything was possible. And it drew Isak crazy because what if this is the universe where I'm happy? What if it's the one where I rot?  
.  
After a while... he learns. He learns to stop screaming at his own head, he learns to hide in daylight, he learns to tell proper lies. He gets to be a little bit honest with himself when he's alone, so he starts imagining the stickers on the ceiling again, and seeing new realities. He closes his eyes and he can see hands held in each other, secret glances and warm bodies wrapped tight around such a big heart. In one of them, Jonas kisses him right before class starts, or by the lockers, and his lips feel hot. In another, he's the one kissing Jonas, in the park this time, just beside the bicycle they were riding together. Then there's the one where they already dropped out of school and spend weeks in a little, spoiled house by the seashore. The one where they've known each other for ages and exchange their first kiss in his bedroom moments before his mom calls for dinner, joysticks still in their hands. The one where he stays and Jonas flies away. And then the one where the glass shards of a green bottle fly everywhere, and there's closed windows, and tears wetting the floor, and yells, and forgotten lukewarm beer on the bedside table. The one where he's curled up in a ball and tries to forget his own existence, tries to forget to breathe. The one where he functions but barely. The one where Jonas isn't there at all. The one where Isak meets someone else.  
  
He falls asleep.  
.  
It's their first year in high school. They're in Nissen, he wears a scarf to school every day, makes some friends, and Jonas and Eva are happy. Together. When Eva hugs him that night he reciprocates with an arm full of sadness and one of affection.  
"Are you sure you don't want to come?" She asks him, heavy black eyeshadow on her lids, a nice dress and her fingers on the door handle. She doesn't really care, he thinks, but it's okay. She's excited for tonight. She'd told him she made new friends, just like Jonas had advised her to. She looks happy.  
"Yeah, don't worry, I'll be fine by myself. I'll like, uh... watch a movie or something," he shrugs, "or write the greatest song in history, still have to decide."  
She smiles at him, "right. As long as you don't trash my house that's fine with me, my mom will be back by tomorrow. Bye, Isak."  
He waves back with a heavy hand.  
"Eva?"  
The door stops a moment before closing, just to open a bit more again.  
"Yeah?"  
He breathes. "Tell Jonas I'm sick, alright?"


End file.
